Human Resource & Payroll Management Blog

If you were to do a thinking assessment of Visionaries, an assessment of what their natural thinking preferences are, you would find that they are future-oriented, holistic, synergistic, intuitive and conceptual. These qualities are what make them natural Visionaries. It is these same tendencies, though, that create a disconnect between them and others in the organization who don’t naturally think this way – and this disconnect can lead to the early death of some great ideas.

If this is your natural thinking style, you are probably frustrated by all of the cool, innovative ideas you throw out to the group that never get acted on (because of course, you aren’t the implementer, you’re just the ‘big picture’ person). If this isn’t your natural thinking style, you are sitting in meetings thinking to yourself that Joe, the “big picture guy”, reminds you of Horse Shack from “Welcome Back Kotter” with all of his interrupting and “OOOh, OOOh, OOOh’s”. And, you wish he’d think something through before opening his pie hole.

What is a Visionary to do? A great beginning is to learn how to communicate your Vision out into a team who has a variety of thinking preferences. And, this simple formula will help you to craft a conversation that will appeal to all preferences.

Address the:

WHAT –

• What are the issues this idea addresses?
• What corporate goals or objectives does it address?
• What facts do you have to support this?

TIP: Be logical and precise for this group

WHO –

• Who will be involved in this vision?
• How will we ensure that they are engaged at every level of the plan?
• How will we meet everyone’s needs?

TIP: This group cares about how people will react to the vision

HOW –

• How might we execute the vision?
• What is the plan to roll out the idea?
• How will we measure success?

TIP: This group needs to understand the step by step unfolding of the vision

WHY-

• What does the future state look like?
• How does this Vision connect to the ‘big picture’
• How will we continue to innovate?

TIP: This group is made of natural Visionaries and wants to know where we are going and how we will stay ahead of the competition

Having a process for presenting your ideas to a variety of thinking preferences will ensure that everyone can relate to your Vision. THEN you can begin to have a conversation about the merits of the idea.

The Challenge: Paper-based processes blocked expansion of services and clients for Neighborly Care Network

The Solution: Having an Electronic Content Management system helped Neighborly improve efficiencies and cut costs by going paperless.

Neighborly Care Network, a Tampa Bay Area not-for-profit, offers services to Seniors aimed at keeping them in their homes and out of nursing homes. Those services include programs like Meals-on-Wheels and Adult Day Care and more recently a PACE program. Neighborly PACE provides healthcare to seniors in a clinical setting within an adult day care center, in its clinic, in their homes, and through an extensive provider network.

Neighborly was drowning in paper and getting bogged down by processing paper. In order to provide premium quality care and to effectively manage costs, Neighborly has implemented a comprehensive Enterprise Content Management System. Using a suite of products from Advanced Processing & Imaging (API), Neighborly cannot only give its healthcare providers, both in the clinic and in the field, the most accurate, easily accessible, and up-to-date medical records, but can also optimize the processing of claims, information requests, and internal analytical reports. And they can track all employee records including certifications, which are mandated by the State of Florida.

Neighborly purchased API solutions because of its integration to their current business applications:

• Sage Abra their HR administration and payroll system
• Microsoft Dynamics SL their financial system
• CH Mack’s Q software for Case/Client Management

Current departments using these solutions include:

• All records related to senior care and services
• HR: for personnel records including; job applications, & health records, certifications, competencies, education records
• Finance:
  • Accounting: for invoices, vendors documentation, grants, & contracts
  • Purchasing: for purchase orders

Per David Lind, CIO for Neighborly, “OptiView is a critical component of Neighborly’s business process reengineering. We’ve gained efficiencies, saved money and enabled our limited staff to be more effective in providing existing and new services to our client community.”

OptiView’s simplicity of integration, extraordinary ease-of-use, and low administration overhead allowed Neighborly, while bringing on an additional program, to reduce the immediate need for five FTEs. OptiView has reduced the turnaround for vendor invoices from three weeks to three days, eliminated $5,000 in FedEx charges per year, and replaced needless printing, copying and faxing of documents.

Then there is the cost of lost records, employee time spent verifying invoice payment, service authorizations, coordinating records from providers, wasted care providers time. Priceless!

By implementing an Electronic Document Management Solution Neighborly Care Network is able to offer more programs and provide more care for Seniors.

To learn more, visit: http://www.apimg.com/neighborly.aspx

I recently read a Forbes.com article discussing how women should be helping other women up the career ladder. The article by Carol Hymowitz discussed the best ways women are mentoring other women in Fortune 500 organizations and a few of her points really stood out for me.

As the article explains:

During the course of my career I’ve met many executive women who seemed far more intent on promoting themselves than championing women who were climbing the ranks behind them.

And gauging from the preference many women employees have for male over female bosses – a choice they’ve expressed in several recent studies — a lot of women managers could benefit from coaching on how to be better mentors.

While I definitely agree that coaching should receive more focus than it does, it’s hard for me to believe that this is just the case with bosses of one gender. I have worked for plenty of male bosses and there is room for improvement across the board —for both sexes and in organizations of all sizes. Most managers need to be better mentors, and organizations need to give them the resources to do so.

The article uses the example of Frontier Communications and their CEO, Maggie Wilderotter, who shares this insight on coaching:

“When I think about talent, I think about someone’s potential and capability more than their experience,” she explains.

This is the most effective and progressive way to approach coaching and talent management as a whole. It reflects a strategic long-term thinking approach to an organization’s talent when managed properly.

The article also examines the approach of Margaret Maxwell Zagel of Grant Thornton, and how she is helping to mentor and manage female staff at her global accounting and consulting company.

Zagel doesn’t have children herself, but she has offered flexible or part-time schedules to several talented attorneys who are raising young children. As a result, she has retained her best staff, she says, and gotten “great work” from women who are grateful that their family needs are being addressed. “They work their hearts out” and are loyal, Zagel says.

I appreciate the value of what Zagel is offering her employees, and I believe this flexible, people-first approach is one that should be adopted with all employees regardless of their gender. The reality is that most of people would welcome some flexibility, perhaps even more so than a bonus or other perks, so offering such benefits improves engagement and retention.

These are just a few examples of how organizations are driving value from talent by using practical, proven approaches to talent management —coaching, development, flexible work arrangements and more.

In April 2010, David King, Vice President of Human Resources at Kool Smiles, sat in his office in Atlanta, Georgia reflecting on the young company’s rapid growth rate. After opening the first Kool Smiles office in Decatur, Georgia in 2002, the company now has over 100 offices in sixteen states and in recent years has remained one of the top 50 fastest growing companies in the United States according to FastCompany.com. Kool Smiles has specialized in pediatric dental care as well as family dental care in previously underserved communities. “Our mission is to serve the underserved,” says King, “We’ve been meeting a need in the communities we go to.”

In early 2008, the company was already growing throughout the United States and began to encounter problems. “A big issue for us is finding qualified doctors, who in many cases we have to move across the country,” reflects King, “Initially we were smaller. We could sort of do this on our own using the recruiting team.” However, as Kool Smiles grew, it became less and less efficient for the recruiting team to perform the necessary relocation activities. Recruiters needed to allocate precious recruitment resources to the tedious, elaborate aspects of relocating doctors from one part of the country to another. King remembers, “Another problem we had was we started to go into locations that the recruiters simply didn’t know anything about. It became very difficult for us to do the moves on our own.”

Enter onto the scene, Jim Munson. Dave King contacted Munson International in early 2008 with the intention of moving twenty five doctors in the first year. King and Kool Smiles were so impressed with his work in 2008 that they asked Mr. Munson to relocate sixty doctors the following year. At current growth levels, the company is forecasting a need to relocate well over a hundred doctors by 2011. Kool Smiles now uses their recruitment team strictly for recruiting tasks while outsourcing relocation to Munson International. King outlines, “They were also able to offer services that we weren’t able to before, such as on-site services. For instance, they could have someone at the location, in many cases remote, who can meet with the doctor on their location visit, show them around, and help them find a place to live.” He goes on to explain how the on-site expert helps sell the job with Kool Smiles and the location in which the family will be living.

When asked to recall a particularly troublesome relocation for Kool Smiles his response was, ‘The majority.’ He points out, “Doctors are a unique demographic. They are high-achievers, used to getting their own way, and not used to being directed. They tend to be very particular. So a high, almost concierge level of customer service is needed when dealing with them.” Kool Smiles has been no exception to the troubles of relocating professionals to foreign locations. Often doctors are moving to places of which they have no previous knowledge and are unsure of their family’s projected happiness. An unhappy family often leads to an unsuccessful move. Munson International began performing site visits for apprehensive doctors using his on-site professionals. The professional would drive the family around, show them the sites, assist with picking good neighborhoods, good schools, and even provide detailed information about traffic patterns.

“The amount that we are spending on this program has grown, as you can imagine,” says King. “One thing Jim and his team does that is particularly value-added for us is the handling of all the paying of vendors, managing invoices from the doctors, and rolling them up into a concise report.” “Back office billing and reporting has been a particularly helpful aspect of the Munson International services,” claims King. When asked about his personal relationship with Mr. Munson, King explains, “Jim has been in the move business a long time and that’s where our company is most benefiting from him. On a personal basis, I have benefited from knowing him because of his vast network of people. He’s able to connect me with people he trusts on a business and personal level and he hasn’t steered me wrong yet. He’s a knowledgeable, seasoned, fun-loving guy who has been around the block. He has some serious horsepower with which to solve business problems.”

Reversing a Bush-era interpretation, the US Department of Labor (DOL) issued Administrator’s Interpretation No. 2010-2 on June 16, 2010. The subject of the Interpretation is the definition of clothes as it is covered in the Fair labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §203(o). There are two issues with regards to the statute:

1. The definition of the term ‘clothes’
2. Whether or not donning, doffing or washing are considered principal activities in the work place

In rendering her opinion, Deputy Administrator Nancy J. Leppink reviewed the history of the definition from opinion letters as far back as 1997. From 1997 until the Bush interpretation in 2002, the time taken putting on and taking off and cleaning protective equipment was considered compensable. ‘Clothes’ referred to “apparel, not protective safety equipment which is generally worn over such apparel and may be cumbersome in nature”. In 2002, departing from the previous interpretations, Leppink goes on to write, the letter relied primarily on, inter alia, the definition of ‘clothes’ in 1982 editions of two dictionaries to support the view that ‘clothes’ included the protective equipment and therefore did not fall under a compensatory event. This view was reaffirmed in a 2007 opinion letter.

Since 2002, the courts have noted a vast divergence of definitions of clothes as defined by different dictionaries, dictionary publishers and editions. The issue surrounding the definition has been generally refined through court decisions such as IBP v. Alvarez 546 U.S. 21, 30 (2005) and Cargill Meat Solutions Wage and Hour litig., 2008 WL 6206795 (M.D. Pa. Apr. 10, 2008) and others, to take a more plain meaning approach to the definition of ‘clothes’. In general, the courts, especially with the Alvarez decision concluded that when protective equipment is worn by the employees because it is required by law, the employer, or is due to the nature of the job, the exemption under §203(o) does not apply.

The second issue with regard to this exemption is whether or not donning and doffing of clothing is a “principal activity”. These would be activities that are integral and indispensable to the job as held by the Supreme Court in the Alvarez case. Here, the Supreme Court ruled that activities occurring after the first principal activity and before the last principal activity are compensable as part of the “continuous workday”. Several court cases are in agreement that donning, doffing and washing could be considered principal activities that trigger the start of the continuous work day.

In summary, Leppink finds that “Changing clothing covered by §203(o) may be a principal activity. Where that is the case, subsequent activities, including walking and waiting, are compensable.” The long and the short of the clothing saga:  if an employee wears protective gear that may be considered cumbersome in nature, review the statute and the Administrator’s Interpretation to determine if that gear is covered or exempted and if you are in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act for compensating the covered (no pun intended) employee.

Are you a different person during the work week? Do you assume an alternate persona as soon as the weekend hits? If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.

This past week I attended a Social Media breakfast that got me thinking about this topic and how it affects your professional life.

It is expected that you carry on a professional attitude in the office, but when Friday arrives you like to let loose a little. You’ve earned it. You have worked hard and completed your tasks for the week, and in most cases, letting your hair down is a good thing. Recreation and relaxation are vital to success and keeps employees from becoming burnt out or overworked.

However, and this is a big however, it is important to separate your two personas. It is not always a good idea to intermingle the two, especially if there is an extreme contrast. In this age of social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – your life is on display for the world to see. It is very easy for employers to hop onto Facebook to do a little “background check”. And, believe me, they do check. Why wouldn’t they? It is an all access pass to your life and your behaviors. It can set you apart from the competition… and not always in a good way.

Take this into consideration when you are posting those not so appropriate photos or making a less than flattering comment about your previous employer. It matters, and it reflects very poorly.

Be sure to set proper privacy settings on Facebook and only post information that would be appropriate for all viewers that visit your profile. Use work-appropriate usernames or create work-only accounts.

So go out and have a good time with your friends and family, just don’t broadcast it to the general public. It could cost you your job.

This is a quick FYI to employers who may be (un)fortunate enough to receive a letter from the IRS asking for voluntarily completion of an on-line questionnaire regarding their 401(k) plans. Approximately 1200 of these letters are going out from the IRS in the next few weeks.

Should your company receive such a ‘voluntary’ request, it may be best to have the questionnaire completed by an experienced/expert plan administrator who has a thorough understanding of plan administration and requirements. According to Audrey E. Mross, an attorney with Munck Carter in Dallas, when the IRS asked for a voluntary audit in 2008 of university executive pay and other income, 30 universities received visits from IRS auditors as a result.

401(k) plans are THE most popular retirement plans available today. Since their inception in 1987, businesses have moved from fixed benefit plans to these more flexible and portable retirement plans to benefit their employees. However, the rules governing 401(k) and its sister plan, 304(b), are complex and change almost as frequently as the weather.

Every year, participating companies should do a self audit of the plan to ensure compliance. At http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/pub4531.pdf a useful audit tool is available to help. Review the tool with a tax advisor to ensure understanding and answer the questions appropriately.

A few of the critical highpoints regarding 401(k) compliance:

1. A separate trust fund must be established to manage all plan funds.
2. Federal form 5500 must be filed annually.
3. Discrimination tests should be performed at least annually to be sure the plan does not favor  the higher paid employees.
4. Hardship withdrawals must be in compliance with IRS rules.
5. You must use an accurate, current record keeping system.
6. The plan fiduciary must be considered to be acting in the sole interest of plan participants and therefore should not be in a situation where s/he may be considered compromised when it comes to plan decision making.

There are many 401(k) plan options and companies should review how best to build plans that fit the needs of their employee populations without burdening the business with administrative costs. Most importantly, don’t assume anything with regards to plans if you have an external fiduciary.  The act of choosing a fiduciary is in itself a fiduciary responsibility and therefore obligates the company to take responsibility for a properly managed and functioning 401(k) plan.

At http://www.irs.gov/retirement/sponsor/article/0,,id=151923,00.html businesses interested in offering a qualified 401(k) program for their employees can find an excellent resource guide.

Have you ever lost out on a preferred candidate because your hiring process was so slow that a competitor made the offer, completed the hiring process and had the person on board before you could make an offer? Wonder how much that cost you?

Additionally, many organizations spend a substantial amount of their budget on personnel expenses that are due to regulatory requirements dictated by government regulations. These organizations are looking for ways to cut these costs, make their Human Resource processes more transparent and reduce the need for a paper system.

Business Process management (BPM) is the answer to all these needs. BPM can make these processes repeatable, sustainable and cost effective.

For example, let us take a look at an unnamed university’s hiring process for a non-student technician. The owner is the Director of Employment Services. The hiring process touches several areas such as the employing unit, employment services, personnel processing and records, the schools/colleges/divisions, payroll, and, of course, the candidate.

During this process, there are several forms from the university that must be filled out, and require an approval from the dean. Also federal and state employment verification forms must be completed; then the various paperwork is forwarded between the functional areas and entered into several, disparate systems. Perhaps there are criminal background checks or other clearances. Finally, a candidate is hired, an employee file is created and payroll is notified (we didn’t even get to the payroll forms).

This process is somewhat simplified for the purposes of this article. However, a BPMS will allow the university to create the position, maintain the employee’s records, maintain their forms, submit all approvals, forward the desired information to the various departments and update other disparate systems.

A less complicated example is a vacation request. With a full BPM Suite, here is the scenario: The employee initiates a leave request by entering her name, employee ID and the dates of the leave. The system then verifies the employee has accrued the needed leave and creates a task and/or emails the request to the supervisor. The Supervisor approves or denies the request and an email is sent to the employee and HR. When the employee returns from the leave the amount of the leave is deducted from the employee’s records. This automated process saves both the organization and the employee’s time and money.

Compliance with regulation and reduction of operating costs is the driving force behind the need to automate and improve processes. Federal regulations are specific, and if HR processes are done wrong can cause liability problems. The regulations in HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley are also major contributors to this compliance nightmare. In-house auditing work requiring ongoing verification and review have generated documentation and retention requirements that are very important for compliance.

Business Process Management can assist HR Departments to reduce resource requirements, save time and money by automating the processes involved in:

• Recruitment and Hiring
• Leave requests
• Training and certification
• Timesheets
• Benefits enrollment
• Performance reviews
• Salary/wage changes
• Policy changes

There are many HR processes that organizations can automate, from the hiring and termination processes, to the performance review process, as well as multi-page, complex processes instituted by government, academia and the business sector. As organizations strive to cut costs and manpower requirements, BPM can be a major part to this effort.

To learn about BPM or CAASPRE Consulting go to: www.caaspreconsulting.com

There have been several court cases regarding employee privacy and utilization of company-provided technology. Carefully written company policies are indispensable for avoiding costly lawsuits. When creating new policies, you will need to focus on content, implementation and enforcement.

One thing is certain: if there is no policy the company has few, if any, rights.  That doesn’t mean policies are the solution to all the impacts the use of technology in the workplace has on employee – employer relations.  Employers who provide computers, email, internet, phones, cell phones, walkie-talkies, pagers or any other form of electronic communication device, should have policies regarding their usage.

Policy writing as it relates to technology may be a fine art. When composing a policy, it’s important to consider the following:

1. Employees:  When writing policies, keep your employees in mind. Don’t fill policies with technology jargon that might not be familiar to all employees. Policies written in terms not easily understood by the masses are ineffectual.  Employees won’t bother to follow what they can’t understand.
2. Managers:  These are the people trusted to implement and enforce the written policies. They should be part of the policy development process to help guarantee their buy-in.  Participation improves understanding. When the manager understands the need for and importance of a policy, they are much more likely to expect and get compliance from their workers.
3. Development Team:  One size fits all doesn’t always work when it comes to the nuances of technology.  Human resources should request that company techno-wizards review policies related to technology and its use in the workplace. IT needs to educate HR on the challenges and opportunities presented by emerging technologies so that policies don’t stifle the organizations ability to compete in the global marketplace.
4. Communication and Implementation:  Policy for the sake of having a policy is an exercise in futility.  Policies should be developed because a real need has been identified.  Companies should have an implementation strategy that includes training programs for all levels of employees along with documentation of participation.
5. Enforcement:  Policies are only as good as the technology that exists to back them up.  HR and IT need to work in close consultation regarding techno-policies to decide who is responsible for monitoring, and  what constitutes an infraction. It is probable that IT will be less likely to consider something an infraction than HR would in the same situation.

Technology policies and procedures alone are not going to keep companies out of court, but well-informed employees, who work with a management team knowledgeable enough to interpret and enforce technology policies can be a strong deterrent to future employee litigation.

Earlier in the spring, I came across an article by Ian Shapira in the Washington Post on the work ethic and drive of Millennials – Millennials accused of lax work ethic say it’s not all about 9-to-5. I have heard both sides of this debate spring up over the years in print and among HR professionals, so after taking some time to reflect on the subject I thought I would share my thoughts on the article. Shapira’s initial report on some recent generational survey data was initially compelling.

As Shapira explains:

The millennial generation – about 50 million people between ages 18 and 29 —is the only age group in the nation that doesn’t cite work ethic as one of its “principal claims to distinctiveness,” according to a new Pew Research Center study, “Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change.” The Washington-based nonprofit group found that young adults and their elders agree: Baby boomers and Generation Xers have better work ethics and moral values than those in their 20s.

In a survey of about 1,200 people of all ages, millennials chose other traits to define themselves: 24 percent said “technology use,” 11 percent went with “music/pop culture,” 7 percent chose “liberal/tolerant” and 6 percent said “smarter.” Only 5 percent noted their generation’s “work ethic” – the same portion as who chose “clothes.”

Among older generations, at least twice as many people cited work ethic as a badge of their age group’s identity: 17 percent of boomers, 11 percent of Gen Xers and 10 percent of those 65 and older. The older three generations also take pride in their strong values or morals and in being “respectful,” terms that hardly any millennials in the survey used.

I think that before we come down like a ton of bricks on Millennials, we’d better make sure that we share in a concept of what work is, and in connection, what makes a good work ethic. When I look around I think the term Baby Boomers, Shapira and Gen Xers use when we refer to work and to work ethic is quickly becoming outdated. Current workplace concepts such as weisure and ROWE, where the lines between work and free time are in constant flux, can you really say work defines you? If we have trouble defining these issues then HR faces a number of complex challenges.

One thing that struck me as I read Shapira’s article is that maybe Gen Y has a more sophisticated and perhaps a simply more intelligent concept of work. The article calls it lazy, but I don’t think that really gets to the heart of the difference, which has more to do with work-life balance and blending work seamlessly into other aspects of life. Gen Y resists compartmentalizing work into bin A and leisure into bin B. This new perspective on work seems both healthier and in the end more productive as top performers don’t have to slam on the breaks or step out of the work bin to achieve goals outside of work.

Deborah Frett, CEO, Business and Professional Women’s Foundation posted on this article on Huffington Post in response to the Washington Post piece, and shared some interesting insights into the methodology of Pew’s study. More importantly, Frett pointed out that in this debate about work ethic, we are missing the more important questions:

The current literature on Gen Y, seems preoccupied with the extent to which Gen Y is or isn’t lazy. But this distracts from larger research questions. We need a new framework for understanding Gen Y. We don’t have to stop discussing generational differences, but we do need to probe deeper to understand the factors that create those differences.

• How does Gen Y understand work?
• What is their definition of work ethic?
• How does their understanding of work affect how and when Gen Y produce results?
• How can employers collaborate with Gen Y to redefine the workplace?

For HR, Frett hits the nail on the head noting that we should put our focus on understanding the different perspectives in a workplace in order for all generations to work better together—even if that means seriously re-evaluating how we define a workplace.  Simply labeling a whole generation lazy because they don’t fit the mold of past generations does not help any organization get better. It wasn’t so long ago that Baby Boomers couldn’t understand my Gen X group’s approach to work and labeled us slackers. We worked through that though and I am sure in time we will learn to understand work through the eyes of Gen Y. Let me know what you think. Is the difference in attitudes between Gen Y and older generations bigger and more difficult to overcome than the gap between other generations?